


We Rattle This Scene

by tinmiss1939



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Enjolras Is Bad At Feelings, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Shippy Gen, Éponine Is Better At Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-17
Updated: 2013-09-17
Packaged: 2017-12-26 20:10:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/969804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinmiss1939/pseuds/tinmiss1939
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a College AU, Eponine and Enjolras have a conversation after student government elections. If the good guys won, why is Enjolras working, i.e. hiding, alone in his room? Pre-Ship, oneshot. "What do you know? This house is falling apart..."</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Rattle This Scene

Eponine leaned against the battered door frame of Enjolras's dorm room. "Prouvaire is worried."

It was a lie, but easier than admitting she was worried. In the crush of the party downstairs, most of Les Amis hadn't even noticed their leader's withdrawal, let alone the sullen look on his face or the fifth of whiskey in his hand.

'Isn't he with Grantaire? Check the bar.'

'I don't know where he is right  _now_ , but if you see him or 'Ferre tell them we're out of vodka.'

'Relax, Eponine. He's probably in the kitchen harassing the investment club about tax reform.'

Jehan had come closest, with a thoughtful look and quiet encouragement to find their newly-elected Student Government President. "Text me if you can't find him. I'll help." Then he'd patted her shoulder, mumbled something about trusting her judgement, and wandered off towards the band.

She'd distracted herself with the party for a while, finding the extra case of vodka and sweet talking campus secuity as needed. There was plenty to distract her and plenty to celebrate. Getting Enjolras elected hadn't been that difficult, but they had clearly been treating it as a trial run for  _something_. And it could matter-getting Enjolras and Combeferre that much closer to the right ears, that much more legitimacy with the local media. The boys ultimately had much bigger dreams than student government, but there was plenty to be done on campus. The university president, Lou Phillips, was turning out to be an absolute bastard and probably worse than the last one. He was also too well connected to get rid easily. If the boys had known last year what they knew now...

Eponine fought that ingrained need to know where everyone was, but remembering last year's little "July Adventure," as Grantaire liked to call it, wasn't helping. She could distract herself all she liked, but her mental head count was still wrong. Courf, 'Ferre, Jehan, Marius, Cosette, Gavroche-everyone was where they should be except Enjolras and he had been missing for far too long. She gave in.

There were only so many places he would go, but Eponine didn't expect to find him so easily, in the first place she looked. It was a poor hiding spot - in his own room three floors up, hunched over a laptop screen with the half-empty bottle on the desk. The laptop was typical and usually accompanied by old pamphlets and empty coffee cups. The frown lines and shadows on his face were concerning, and so was the whiskey. She'd only seen him seriously drink once, on a national election night freshman year.

After the exit polls had returned, Enjolras had barricaded himself in his seventh floor dorm room. Grantaire had been worried he might throw himself out the window, so he'd blackmailed her into picking the lock. She'd intended to leave immediately after but the young activist had looked so pathetic, curled up on the floor and staring at a worn copy of Plato's  _Republic_. Grantaire had begged her to stay, pleading, "I'll fuck this up. We can't let this break him and I'll just fuck it up." They'd forced vodka tonics down his throat and watched  _Casablanca_  until Enjolras collapsed into bed, humming the Marseillaise. Enjolras barely remembered it and the three of them hadn't told a soul.

Two years later and now this - avoiding his inner circle, exhausted, drinking. Everything about the image in front of her was off; it confirmed her instincts from the party. "Why are you hiding up here?"

"I'm not hiding. I'm working." He was clearly doing both, but she let that slide while he rambled on. "The state senate has another marriage protection bill on the the slate for discussion next week, I'm behind on my history term paper, and on the national level—"

"None of that answers the question of why you are in up here alone." Her words sounded harsh, grating on her own ears, as they always did. She tried to lighten her tone. "At the very least you should be down there keeping Courf from hitting on freshmen."

The tapping at the keyboard paused for a moment. "Any trouble they find on their own-" He frowned. "They can take care of each other just fine without me." The tapping resumed. She closed the door behind her and crossed the room slowly to pick up the tumbler of whiskey. She took a sip. Rich, warm. Probably expensive.

"You had a meeting with the president today."

"Yes, with Combeferre after the announcement. What of it?" His clipped words betrayed that he was losing patience with her. She pushed.

"Then you had another meeting without 'Ferre that you're not telling anyone about."

He turned to glance at her and curiosity drew his eyebrows together. "How did you…" He trailed off, uncertain. It wasn't much of a reaction, but it was something.

She shrugged. He didn't need to know she'd gone to high school with the secretary, who'd texted her about the new student government president who'd just walked out of the office for the second time that day. 'Super hot but omg rude! Ignored me twice. Is he single?' If only Cherise could see him now, washed out by the blue light of laptop screen. His button down shirt was a wrinkled mess and that glorious mop of hair looked like he'd stuck his fingers in a light socket. Phoebus Apollo was not in attendance tonight.

"Now you're in your room, sulking and drinking instead of energizing the base or whatever you do at parties. What happened?"

He scoffed, curiosity used up. "Nothing happened."

"Liar."

"It was just a run down of yearly agendas. Nothing happened." He turned back to his computer and thumped the touchpad repeatedly.

"Bad liar."

His hands spasmed on the keys. "Why do you even care?" he said. "Shouldn't you be asking Marius rather than me? Since when do-since when do you shadow me around?" The comment should have been biting and cruel, but he stuttered too much and refused to look at her. Ad hominem attacks were so far beneath Enjolras he could barely complete the sentence.  _Weakness_ , her mother's voice sounded in her head.  _The confident ones don't attack until they're cornered._

She took gulp of whiskey, letting it burn the memory away. Eponine slid onto the desk sideways. When Enjolras continued to ignore her, she snapped the laptop lid shut, barely missing his fingers as he jerked his hands away. Finally she had his full attention, by way of a glare that would melt glass.

"What the hell is your problem?!"

She leaned closer, purposely invading his personal space. "What's yours?"

Furious blue eyes. Harsh breathing. The wooden chair creaking. The pounding bass of the party downstairs - a party that was ostensibly in his honor, the party where she would be, where  _he_  would be, if they were anywhere near normal. Neither of them were, really. Eponine knew she hadn't been well adjusted in years, and she doubted that Enjolras had ever been properly socialized.

He looked away first and crossed his arms over his chest, an obviously protective move. His gaze was focused somewhere a thousand yards behind her, becoming glassy with more than the alcohol. The longer he stared, the more she became unnerved. It was a look she would expect from Grantaire, or maybe from Cosette on one of the days that she remembered their foster home.

 _Ease off_ , she ordered herself.  _Enjolras is safe. He's not a threat and you've known that for years. You're here to help, so be honest._ "Enjolras...something is wrong and you're making me wonder how wrong it might actually be." He stayed silent, lost in his own head. Damn it, she wasn't actually trying to break him. "If you won't talk to me, who will you talk to? Combeferre?" He winced. "Courfeyrac?" Even more pain. "I'll get Prouvaire if-"

"Stop," he whispered. "Just stop."

His eyes were closed tightly against some truth that he couldn't face. She waited, still perched on the desk. He looked so young from this angle - young and lost. Eponine was struck with an intense desire to touch his brow and smooth out the deep creases. Before she could even process that feeling, he shook his head and opened his eyes.

"Phillips knows about the hack last semester, on the board of governors. That's what the meeting was about. It was traced to Graintaire, and then to Courf. I don't think they have enough to go to the police, but they know it was us." He reached for the tumbler, swirling the whiskey before taking a sip. "I don't know if I can protect them."

And in a flash Eponine understood - the hiding, the drinking, the refusal to talk to Les Amis. Any other challenge would have Enjolras calling a war council, but when it involved his friends, especially Grantaire, sometimes he just...froze for a moment.  _"Are you sure? Do you understand the consequences? Explain it back to me."_  Whether it was a hack into the financial records of corrupt university officials or a simple sit-in protest at the cafeteria, she'd never met anyone who got so involved with informed consent. It made her wonder, at times.

Enjolras drained the rest of the glass then, wincing at the afterburn. "Well, I  _can_  protect them, by becoming the administration's lapdog for the rest of the year. They're starting with need-blind financial aid. They fucked up the endowment." He laughed, a horrible brittle sound. "They fucked up the endowment  _again_."

Eponine had no illusions about their university's leadership and corruption wasn't exactly new territory for her. Despite this, her brain still tripped over one particular fact. "You've been working on reversing the financial aid rule for months. They already agreed to reinstate it. Publically." Grantaire had the press release taped to his door.

"Oh, they're calling it need sensitive or need aware or some other bullshit term that basically means they can do whatever they want. And now if someone like Grantaire or you applies, they can say no and let in another prep school castoff whose Dad owns a Fortune 500 company."

"That's..." She stumbled for words, but couldn't find any that would fit. "I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry, too. I don't think any of this will affect you or Gav, but it might be smarter to get as far from us as possible."

He reached for the whiskey bottle, but she snatched it away and walked it over to the bookshelf on the other side of the room. "That's enough of that. Now you're being maudlin. I knew what we were doing better than any of you overprogrammed Boy Scout hipsters."

He looked at her just enough to roll his eyes. "That insult doesn't even make sense. And we are not hipsters."

"Jehan is kind of a hipster."

"Maybe." He yawned. It was the opening she needed, so she pounced on it. "Bed, now." He stood and was clearly gearing up for an argument, but then swayed and stumbled sideways. Eponine caught him with a hand on his chest and one on his waist.

"Easy there, tiger."

"I'm fine," he mumbled, but he held her shoulders a little too tightly for that to be true. He blinked a few times. "Mostly."

"Yes, you're just fine," she soothed, guiding him towards the bed. "When was the last time you slept?" Or ate? She thought to herself. Or slowed down, ever?

"You sound like 'Ferre. Or Joly."

"Smart guys." He seemed more exhausted than drunk. She eased him onto the bed and started singing quietly as she tucked him in. _"Allons enfants de la Patrie; Le jour de gloire est arrive..."_  He smiled at what was probably a vague memory for him. His sweet tenor joined in for few lines.

_"Contre nous de la tyrannie; L'etendard sanglant est leve..."_

She brought over a bottle of water from his mini fridge and sat next to him on the bed.

"You've been manipulating me all night," he said, blinking tiredly. "Thanks, I think."

"You're welcome." She finally gave in to herself and ran her fingers through his hair. He accepted the mild physical affection with a half smile. "Sleep or I'll come back and confiscate your laptop."

She hummed a few more bars while he closed his eyes and drifted off.

"Dors bien, cher prince."

Once she was in the hallway with the door shut firmly behind her, she pulled out her phone and scrolled through her contacts.

"Montparnasse. Remember how you owe me?"


End file.
